The Next Step – Learn How To Finish

By John Brice
Special Contributor

COLUMBUS, OHIO – The obligatory post-game handshake completed, Marcus Freeman pivoted and began an unfamiliar jog off the turf inside Ohio Stadium Saturday night having just lost a game.

A former Buckeyes star, Freeman has risen to even greater heights in the coaching ranks to make his regular-season debut in the sport’s only guaranteed top-five matchup of the season.

And Freeman, who had shared a poignant embrace pre-game with OSU athletics director Gene Smith, another of this game’s common threads with Smith’s background as a Notre Dame alumnus, had just watched as his fifth-ranked Fighting Irish perch on the precipice of a momentous upset; the Irish had the ball and a chance to take the lead in the fourth quarter.

With a first-time starting quarterback, a missing preseason All-America pick at left guard and seven new assistant coaches, to say nothing of brand-new specialists, Freeman’s Irish had led the host Buckeyes by scores of 3-0 and 10-7 – for some 32 minutes of game time.

Not good enough. Those were among the first-year head coach’s first words after his first-ever regular-season game as head coach.

Not emotional; analytical. Not despondent; determined.

“We’ve got to get better,” Freeman said. “We’ve got to learn how to finish. We’ve got a good football team. We’ve got to learn how to finish.

“And that’s what I just told them. You can’t be surprised when all of a sudden, it’s a 10-7 ball game midway through the third quarter against a good — really, really good football team. Don’t be surprised.”

The Irish, frankly, never looked surprised. They looked, at times, one additional third-down stop or just one second-half score from turning college football on its head in its first full weekend.

 

Tyler Buchner wasn’t perfect, but neither he nor his offensive mates committed a single turnover. The offensive line, even without the aforementioned Jarrett Patterson, asserted itself throughout the entire first half and yielded just three sacks to a Buckeyes’ defense dotted with pro prospects.

Notre Dame’s defense? It set the tone – aggressively, eliciting a couple of early penalties – with a flurry of message-delivering hits on the Buckeyes, included a hard-nosed shot from Brandon Joseph that ultimately dislodged Ohio State star wideout Jaxon Smith-Njigba from the game in its opening moments.

But as the Buckeyes converted four of their final six third-down attempts, the Irish offered a quick self-assessment postgame that showed no disillusionment.

“Something happened,” Notre Dame linebacker Jack Kiser said, “and we just weren’t executing at the level we wanted to late in the game. And in a big game against a really good opponent, you have to find ways to gather the momentum and make sure you make those plays and execute at the standard we have.

“That just didn’t happen in those certain situations.”

The Buckeyes, who had allotted Notre Dame scant more than 5,000 tickets for this affair, had the overwhelming support of the largely scarlet-clad crowd of 106,594 on a day that OSU officials had said they expected to shatter records for the most people ever around and on their campus.

Folks had camped out for ESPN’s Gameday program to be present when gates opened at 5 a.m., and intermittent rain showers throughout the afternoon and into the evening did little to tamp down enthusiasm for just the seventh all-time meeting between these two powers.

In other words, there were both external and internal factors that affected Notre Dame’s execution.

Yet it never was for lack of effort. It wasn’t for lack of instruction. Notre Dame has been among college football’s most consistent and elite programs the previous five years; Freeman, emphatically, attacked this job the past nine months because he believes there is more.

That, above all, was Freeman’s message on this night. To himself. To his players.

“Not the result we came here; there’s no such thing as a moral victory,” Freeman emphasized.

He wasn’t done.

“That’s got to be the expectation for this group,” Freeman said of being in every game, of having late leads and being positioned for victory. “Now we have to learn to finish. Don’t hold off. I felt that a little bit in me as a coach [saying to himself] ‘Just got to hold on, it’s 10-7 midway through the third (quarter).’

“We have to continue to attack and continue to execute. And that’s what we’ve got to do better.”

There’s no reason not to expect improvement. Tommy Rees’ offenses have improved year over year, month over month and regularly from game to game.

Al Golden’s Irish defense just thwarted Ohio State to its lowest-ever home point total in Ryan Day’s tenure atop the Buckeyes’ program.

And Freeman, with a track record previously for such as an elite defensive coordinator, has never accepted anything less than a quest for continuous improvement.

It might not officially be a tenet of Freeman’s ‘The Golden Standard,’ but it’s imperative.

“They battled the entire game,” Freeman said. “And I want to make sure that I say that. We didn’t execute late in the game when we had to. We didn’t execute the way we needed to. We had a challenge to win the fourth quarter. We didn’t win the fourth quarter. They scored with 13 seconds left in the third and they scored at the end of the fourth, and we didn’t respond. …

“We’ve got to be able to finish and execute in the fourth quarter.”

Moments before that press conference, a couple of Freeman’s former Buckeyes teammates had attempted to stop him for a quick embrace as he trotted off the field. Notre Dame’s coach was neither rude nor in the mood for any such social element.

Soon, he would be finished with this game – and already Freeman had turned his focus toward helping Notre Dame close out this chapter and move on to its next one.